Not surprisingly, the two Pirate Bay cofounders who appealed their Swedish conviction to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) have lost.

As we reported last year, Jonas Nilsson (attorney to Fredrik “tiamo” Neij) and Peter Althin (attorney to Peter “brokep” Sunde) filed an appeal in June 2012 to the Strasbourg, France-based court.

In a unanimous decision, the ECHR ruled Wednesday that the petitioners’ application was “inadmissible,” finding that the existing Swedish conviction did not violate Neij or Sunde's human rights. The decision was made by seven judges from across Europe, representing Liechtenstein, Germany, Slovenia, Ireland, Ukraine, Sweden, and the Czech Republic.

“The Court considered that the domestic courts had rightly balanced the competing interests at stake—i.e. the right of the applicants to receive and impart information and the necessity to protect copyright—when convicting the applicants and therefore rejected their application as manifestly ill-founded,” the court wrote in a statement.

Ars reached out to the two applicants and their attorneys for comment, but they did not immediately respond.

So much for optimism

That same article includes this caveat, however: “The exercise of these freedoms, since it carries with it duties and responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions, or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society…”

Even if the ECHR had ruled in Neij and Sunde’s favor, it lacks the power to overturn decisions by member states. In 2010, a Swedish appellate court reduced their prison sentences to between four and ten months each, but it increased their collective fine to 46 million Swedish kronor ($6.8 million).

Last year, Nilsson explained to Ars that had the ECHR ruled in their favor, it perhaps could prompt a formal rebuke against Sweden, which might include financial damages and perhaps even a new trial. “I am an optimist,” Nilsson told Ars in 2012.

“Award of damages cannot be regarded as disproportionate”

In its 12-page decision, the court left little room for doubt, rejecting all of the Pirate Bay defendants’ arguments.

In this connection, the Court would also underline that the width of the margin of appreciation afforded to States varies depending on a number of factors, among which the type of information at issue is of particular importance. In the present case, although protected by Article 10, the safeguards afforded to the distributed material in respect of which the applicants were convicted cannot reach the same level as that afforded to political expression and debate. It follows that the nature of the information at hand, and the balancing interest mentioned above, both are such as to afford the State a wide margin of appreciation which, when accumulated as in the present case, makes the margin of appreciation particularly wide (Ashby Donald and Others, cited above, § 41).

Since the Swedish authorities were under an obligation to protect the plaintiffs’ property rights in accordance with the Copyright Act and the Convention, the Court finds that there were weighty reasons for the restriction of the applicants’ freedom of expression. Moreover, the Swedish courts advanced relevant and sufficient reasons to consider that the applicants’ activities within the commercially run TPB [The Pirate Bay] amounted to criminal conduct requiring appropriate punishment. In this respect, the Court reiterates that the applicants were only convicted for materials which were copyright-protected.

In the present case, the Court considers that the prison sentence and award of damages cannot be regarded as disproportionate. In reaching this conclusion, the Court has regard to the fact that the domestic courts found that the applicants had not taken any action to remove the torrent files in question, despite having been urged to do so. Instead they had been indifferent to the fact that copyright-protected works had been the subject of file-sharing activities via TPB.

It’s likely that the ECHR’s decision will have little—if any—effect on the Pirate Bay four.

In a recently produced film, TPB AFK, Neij seems content to wantonly flout Swedish courts. He is living in Laos. Sunde, somehow, officially lives in Berlin. Svartholm Warg, who was deported last year from Cambodia on a visa violation, continues to be held in a Swedish prison.

After the appeals trial, the fourth codefendant, the millionaire Carl Lundström, paid 233,000 Swedish kronor ($35,000)—a tiny fraction of the total amount owed.

In 2012, Lundström spent his four-month sentence under house arrest in the Swedish city of Göteborg while wearing an “electronic tag” and performing community service. He then left the country and now lives in Rapperswil, Switzerland, just southeast of Zurich—where he has a pending application to declare himself bankrupt.

so, even under the rules of so-called Human Rights, money is more important than freedom. more importantly, USA money and USA entertainment industries are more important than freedom! what a freakin' joke!! the corruption spreads everywhere!!

so, even under the rules of so-called Human Rights, money is more important than freedom. more importantly, USA money and USA entertainment industries are more important than freedom! what a freakin' joke!! the corruption spreads everywhere!!

Yes, its corruption when you cannot even distribute other people's work without their permission. Really. Honest.

Your idea of rights seem rather one sided, as in only those infringing on other people's right have any in your world.

It's a bit insulting to think going to a Swedish prison for the infringement TPB help to facilitate is somehow a violation of human rights. It was a one year sentence. And the damages of like 3.6 million USD or so each seems fairly reasonable.

*edit* I didn't notice the reduced sentence and slight increase in damages. They still seem entirely reasonable.

I do not think I have a right to download for free all Hollywood movies. It's not limiting my freedom. My freedom let's me not to watch them and not to give them my money.What I am really pissed about is abuse of the system by copyrights holders suing normal people for crazy "damages" or forcing them into "settlements" under a huge lawyer's pressure.

The problem with this case is that while they enabled sharing of copyrighted content by creating a .torrent search engine, and encouraged sharing of copyrighted content, they didn't distribute the content themselves (or at least, that is not what they have an arrest warrant for).

It seems to me like these two are being used as scapegoats, because the alternative and proper solution -- namely, suing individual uploaders and downloaders (seeders and leechers) -- is simply not feasible. This is extremely disheartening: just because the prosecutors are in a disadvantageous position, they are essentially bullying their way to their goals. The hard truth for the copyright holders is that they don't have a chance to stop sharing of their content unless it is by "shooting the messenger."

To me, this feels wrong -- enabling and encouraging piracy isn't the same as pirating. It is a scary, unfair world.

The problem with this case is that while they enabled sharing of copyrighted content by creating a .torrent search engine, and encouraged sharing of copyrighted content, they didn't distribute the content themselves (or at least, that is not what they have an arrest warrant for).

It seems to me like these two are being used as scapegoats, because the alternative and proper solution -- namely, suing individual uploaders and downloaders (seeders and leechers) -- is simply not feasible. This is extremely disheartening: just because the prosecutors are in a disadvantageous position, they are essentially bullying their way to their goals. The hard truth for the copyright holders is that they don't have a chance to stop sharing of their content unless it is by "shooting the messenger."

To me, this feels wrong -- enabling and encouraging piracy isn't the same as pirating. It is a scary, unfair world.

Yes, by the rationale that TPB is liable for content it links to, any general purpose search engine that doesn't block torrents (inevitably including ones not in violation of copyright) could be liable as well. Government attacks on centralized distribution and trackers has pushed them to be distributed; inevitably, searching will become distributed as well if centralized search engines take too much heat.

Look, we all know torrenting a movie is illegal.I know it. You know, we all know it. You may think it should be legal, but you know it isn't.You might disagree with why it isn't legal, but that does not change the fact that it isn't legal.

If you do the crime then don't cry about doing the time.

Like The Simpsons taught us when Rex Banner said “”We can’t choose what laws to obey, if we could then I’d kill everybody that looked at me cockeyed”

Why am I not surprised that the court denied their application? Worse yet, they unanimously reject every single item on that application? They didn't have a single valid argument? I find that hard to believe. This stinks of corruption.

I'm amused to hear them call it a "property right" that needed protecting. That made me roll my eyes until they came around from the opposite side. How absurd it is that something that is an expression (i.e. speech) can be owned as a discreet unit of property. Even more ironic is that on the internet, a purely speech based platform, that people can be accused of property rights violations by sharing speech/expressions. Beware what conversations you have on the internet, you may be sharing speech that is property of another! They can rationalize it all they want, but what they are trying to do is own certain speech and expression. Tiamo and Sunde are being offered up as sacrificial lambs to appease the MAFIAA gods.

@Tijger

You can't make a rational argument, so you go for moral appeals instead? Despite what you have been led to believe, copyright doesn't grant property rights. They are temporary grants of exclusivity to exploit a work that subsequently is required to become part of the public domain after said term expires. It's just too bad that small minds like yourself have supported the perpetual extension of that term so far that those works won't be useful to anyone alive today.

Furthermore, The Pirate Bay does not host, transfer, nor handle any of the content itself. They are a search engine that finds links to the actual people hosting and sharing the files. Nothing that is hosted on The Pirate Bay is infringing, but the MAFIAA likes to ignore that fact because it's easier to attack the centralized distribution than it is to pursue the individuals committing the infringement. Their strategy is to force the world back to a read-only system where the content industry sells you the content and you passively consume; they can't stand the fact that the internet provides a one-to-many connection that permits anyone to be a content distributor.

@etc inittab

Just because it's illegal, doesn't make it justified nor right. For the longest time blacks were not permitted to marry and gays are facing the same issue right now. Should we honor the law, even if it is unjust and unconscionable or should we practice civil disobedience to bring attention to the injustice that such laws impose on us? You tell me.

It is? Doesn't that depend on the movie and what jurisdiction you're in?

Well sure, and I bet most torrents are of the public domain, 1938 classic 'Algiers'.Ok, no. Without seeing a chart of every movie downloaded via torrent, I am going to take a leap of faith and assume most are still copyrighted.

Just because it's illegal, doesn't make it justified nor right. For the longest time blacks were not permitted to marry and gays are facing the same issue right now. Should we honor the law, even if it is unjust and unconscionable or should we practice civil disobedience to bring attention to the injustice that such laws impose on us? You tell me.

No, that is not what I said at all. If you don't believe the law if just, and your act of 'civil disobedience' is to torrent The Avengers 2 weeks before its release, fine, have a blast. But then don't cry when you are caught and punished according to the law. If the law changes because of your actions, great, mission accomplished then.And you are really trying to equate downloading movies you don't want to pay for to the social issues black and gays have, and continue, to face? Yikes.

Yes, its corruption when you cannot even distribute other people's work without their permission. Really. Honest.

I saw some of the other comments, and noted the downvotes, but yours seemed to be the most neutral so I'm replying to yours.

This question is not so much for you but for those who are of the "they got what they deserved" crowd (except for TD whom defies explanation). In what capacity does it serve justice if we essentially levy a fine so large that a person has no hope of ever paying it back, or even put into prison, for what is essentially making a copy of an item? Don't get me wrong I'm not saying some kind of punishment is not deserved but I fail to see where robbing someone of the ability to have a future is proportionate to the crime at hand. Heck, we give lighter sentences to people who actually cause physical harm than we do to these kinds of crimes which still baffles me.

Now I'm sure some of you are going "but it's the law" but really what are we accomplishing here? It's pretty clear that all of the hoopla about "war on piracy" is'nt working, piracy is still out there, and all we're doing really is punishing people without addressing the root cause: media that is cheaply accessible by EVERYONE regardless of border or country (well except for the middle east where piracy is a minor issue compared to the other things going on there).

Consider, if there was a legal streaming service for a nominal fee (read: not cable and think Netflix-style service) where people could get these shows that the piracy issue would start to solve itself. Look at what's happening with the music industry where you have services like Spotify, and non-DRM music via other digital vendors, and piracy rates are going down and digital sales are slowly increasing. None of this "Oh, pay us an extra $20 and we'll give you a single-use digital copy" or "this content is not available in your country" approach that seems to be all the rage.

Why are we so dead-set on pulling a Dredd on every single person that pirates rather than addressing the issue that's causing it to begin with? Do we really still want to continue to retain the title of "Country with the most people in prison" that we have compared to the rest of the world? Why are we as a society so firmly dead-set on this course of action instead of trying to address the underlying cause?

Yes, its corruption when you cannot even distribute other people's work without their permission. Really. Honest.

Your idea of rights seem rather one sided, as in only those infringing on other people's right have any in your world.

TPB just has magnet links. It isn't distributing others' work. It's allowing people to share works, sometimes in violation of copyright law and sometimes not, with each other.

You're being obtuse, magnet links didnt exist on TPB when this case came to court and was adjudicated. TPB has consistently refused to do any removal of copyrighted works and wasnt coy about that either.

Just because it's illegal, doesn't make it justified nor right. For the longest time blacks were not permitted to marry and gays are facing the same issue right now. Should we honor the law, even if it is unjust and unconscionable or should we practice civil disobedience to bring attention to the injustice that such laws impose on us? You tell me.

No, that is not what I said at all. If you don't believe the law if just, and your act of 'civil disobedience' is to torrent The Avengers 2 weeks before its release, fine, have a blast. But then don't cry when you are caught and punished according to the law. If the law changes because of your actions, great, mission accomplished then.And you are really trying to equate downloading movies you don't want to pay for to the social issues black and gays have, and continue, to face? Yikes.

Yes I am. It was to make a point and it is a valid one. Unjust laws are not to be met with complacency nor tacit approval. Even if you don't think so, copyright is as bad as denying minority groups the right to marry. I cringe at you moral relativism. It's sad how people's deeply emotional attachment to the concept of property rights allows for a wide variety of infringements on civil rights for the sake of granting minority groups more opportunities to make money. Money > liberty it seems.

By the way, a .torrent isn't a movie, it's a link to a seeder or swarm of seeders hosting the file. There's no content in a torrent. You're making a very uninformed assumption. Torrents are not illegal, even if they link to copyrighted works. The infringing works are illegal, but a link is not illegal.

Just because it's illegal, doesn't make it justified nor right. For the longest time blacks were not permitted to marry and gays are facing the same issue right now. Should we honor the law, even if it is unjust and unconscionable or should we practice civil disobedience to bring attention to the injustice that such laws impose on us? You tell me.

So in your mind the GPL is akin to not allowing black people to marry? Interesting.

Just because it's illegal, doesn't make it justified nor right. For the longest time blacks were not permitted to marry and gays are facing the same issue right now. Should we honor the law, even if it is unjust and unconscionable or should we practice civil disobedience to bring attention to the injustice that such laws impose on us? You tell me.

So in your mind the GPL is akin to not allowing black people to marry? Interesting.

The GPL encourages contribution and sharing. What kind of nut are you?

They broke an idiotic law and didn't have the backing to warrant a slap on the wrist. I still applaud them for what they do. If the **AA is going to equate unauthorized distribution to stealing, then I say we equate the purchasing of legislators and increasing copyright to the entropic heat death of the universe as stealing as well. We have a social contract, we give content creators a temporary monopoly on distribution, and they enrich our culture by adding to the public domain. Since my grandchildren (theoretical still) will never get to hear the Beatles in the public domain, I have no problem with people downloading what they want, when they want it. Obviously it's illegal, but it is not unethical.

Just because it's illegal, doesn't make it justified nor right. For the longest time blacks were not permitted to marry and gays are facing the same issue right now. Should we honor the law, even if it is unjust and unconscionable or should we practice civil disobedience to bring attention to the injustice that such laws impose on us? You tell me.

So in your mind the GPL is akin to not allowing black people to marry? Interesting.

The GPL encourages contribution and sharing. What kind of nut are you?

You're unaware that the GPL is a licence which is defended by copyright? And has been defended succesfully in court using copyright laws.

Just because it's illegal, doesn't make it justified nor right. For the longest time blacks were not permitted to marry and gays are facing the same issue right now. Should we honor the law, even if it is unjust and unconscionable or should we practice civil disobedience to bring attention to the injustice that such laws impose on us? You tell me.

So in your mind the GPL is akin to not allowing black people to marry? Interesting.

The GPL encourages contribution and sharing. What kind of nut are you?

You're unaware that the GPL is a licence which is defended by copyright? And has been defended succesfully in court using copyright laws.

I am fully aware of that, but it is a result of having to work within the system in which it exists. In order to counteract copyright, it has to use it to prevent anyone from abusing it to control works that are meant to be shared, not hoarded. The Creative Commons also utilizes copyright in order to function despite the intent to use it as a middle-ground alternative to copyright.

Just because it's illegal, doesn't make it justified nor right. For the longest time blacks were not permitted to marry and gays are facing the same issue right now. Should we honor the law, even if it is unjust and unconscionable or should we practice civil disobedience to bring attention to the injustice that such laws impose on us? You tell me.

No, that is not what I said at all. If you don't believe the law if just, and your act of 'civil disobedience' is to torrent The Avengers 2 weeks before its release, fine, have a blast. But then don't cry when you are caught and punished according to the law. If the law changes because of your actions, great, mission accomplished then.And you are really trying to equate downloading movies you don't want to pay for to the social issues black and gays have, and continue, to face? Yikes.

Don't you know that internet MLKjr's expect to break "unjust" laws like downloading the Avengers a day after its released in theaters without any repercussion. They should be spending their time downloading and reading Letter from Birmingham Jail to actually understand what to expect when you break what you believe is an unjust law. Spoiler alert facing the consequences of said unjust law and brining that to peoples attention is the whole freaking point. Another spoiler alert its one thing when you are beaten and shot with fire houses and have dogs attack children in order to prevent them from sitting next to you at the lunch counter or voting. Its another thing when what you are protesting is not being able to watch Dark Knight Rises without paying. Or worse yet being the middle man allowing people to watch Dejanjo Unchained a week before it opens wide but you have money to buy Ferraris and high end boats.

By the way, a .torrent isn't a movie, it's a link to a seeder or swarm of seeders hosting the file. There's no content in a torrent. You're making a very uninformed assumption. Torrents are not illegal, even if they link to copyrighted works. The infringing works are illegal, but a link is not illegal.

My assumption is very informed, thank you. Yes a torrent is a way to download content, not the content. So with that in mind, say you have three people.Bob - wants drugs.Tom - sell drugs.Carl - knows Bob and Tom.

So drugs are illegal. Providing them is illegal. Obtaining them is illegal.

Now Carl bring Bob to Tom to buy drugs. Carl is the willing method by which Bob gets drugs, all the while knowing they are illegal. But since he neither bought or sold them, and regardless of how many people he helped, he did nothing wrong?

I am fully aware of that, but it is a result of having to work within the system in which it exists. In order to counteract copyright, it has to use it to prevent anyone from abusing it to control works that are meant to be shared, not hoarded. The Creative Commons also utilizes copyright in order to function despite the intent to use it as a middle-ground alternative to copyright.

Wait...what? GPL is counteracting copyrights by using copyright? Riiiiiiiight. So, basically, to use your analogy, they're being racist to counteract racism. Must work a treat.

To me, this feels wrong -- enabling and encouraging piracy isn't the same as pirating. It is a scary, unfair world.

You're right on both points. Enabling and encouraging is the same thing as aiding and abetting. Most service providers have managed to squeak by on the claim that they don't know what people put on their service. TPB has never even made that claim.And yes, the world is scary and unfair; always has been, always will be.

By the way, a .torrent isn't a movie, it's a link to a seeder or swarm of seeders hosting the file. There's no content in a torrent. You're making a very uninformed assumption. Torrents are not illegal, even if they link to copyrighted works. The infringing works are illegal, but a link is not illegal.

My assumption is very informed, thank you. Yes a torrent is a way to download content, not the content. So with that in mind, say you have three people.Bob - wants drugs.Tom - sell drugs.Carl - knows Bob and Tom.

So drugs are illegal. Providing them is illegal. Obtaining them is illegal.

Now Carl bring Bob to Tom to buy drugs. Carl is the willing method by which Bob gets drugs, all the while knowing they are illegal. But since he neither bought or sold them, and regardless of how many people he helped, he did nothing wrong?

Bad analogy. This more like arresting a guy and putting him in jail because he had a list of drug dealers on his website despite the fact that he never used, bought or distributed drugs.

By the way, a .torrent isn't a movie, it's a link to a seeder or swarm of seeders hosting the file. There's no content in a torrent. You're making a very uninformed assumption. Torrents are not illegal, even if they link to copyrighted works. The infringing works are illegal, but a link is not illegal.

My assumption is very informed, thank you. Yes a torrent is a way to download content, not the content. So with that in mind, say you have three people.Bob - wants drugs.Tom - sell drugs.Carl - knows Bob and Tom.

So drugs are illegal. Providing them is illegal. Obtaining them is illegal.

Now Carl bring Bob to Tom to buy drugs. Carl is the willing method by which Bob gets drugs, all the while knowing they are illegal. But since he neither bought or sold them, and regardless of how many people he helped, he did nothing wrong?

What a terrible analogy. What Carl is doing is nothing like what sites like TPB do. They passively disclose to everyone that asks where content can be accessed. They do not actively point you to infringing works as a matter of course. TPB doesn't put links to infringing works in your search results unless you ask for it yourself. The only people facilitating infringement are the seeders and the people actively searching for the seeders. I can do a search for "Ubuntu 12.04 LTS ISO" and I guarantee you that it will only provide me with results that pertain to my search and perfectly legal content. However, if I search for "The Avengers Blu-Ray Rip" it will give me results related to that.

Edit: Just to summarize, so long as you ask TPB for links to legal content, it will provide you with only that.

Freedom of expression is the right to create your own speech--make your own movies, make your own music, express your own political views. It's not your right to take what others have created. When you do this you are actually violating other's human rights.

Freedom of expression is the right to create your own speech--make your own movies, make your own music, express your own political views. It's not your right to take what others have created. When you do this you are actually violating other's human rights.

It's funny how people think copyright is a "human right" instead of a privilege society gives to content creators. There's a big difference. In fact even the creators of copyright thought it was a terrible idea, but the alternative was even worse (no incentive to create culture).

And when corporations appeared they made it even worse by extending the protection to unreasonable periods of time which actually kills culture instead of generating any.

Freedom of expression is the right to create your own speech--make your own movies, make your own music, express your own political views. It's not your right to take what others have created. When you do this you are actually violating other's human rights.

Except you are forgetting that every expression is built on the expressions that came before. If we didn't remix expressions, the works we create would have no cultural context and would be incomprehensible noise. Copyright actually hinders this function of creativity. It says you can't build on what others have done unless it's "substantially different" from the source content, a very vague and arbitrary standard to measure with. You're basically stuck with the paradox of it being better to ask forgiveness than for permission.

I am fully aware of that, but it is a result of having to work within the system in which it exists. In order to counteract copyright, it has to use it to prevent anyone from abusing it to control works that are meant to be shared, not hoarded. The Creative Commons also utilizes copyright in order to function despite the intent to use it as a middle-ground alternative to copyright.

Wait...what? GPL is counteracting copyrights by using copyright? Riiiiiiiight. So, basically, to use your analogy, they're being racist to counteract racism. Must work a treat.

Yes, it counteracts it by preventing the hoarding of useful content and mandating the sharing of contributions to it. You don't understand how copyright works at all do you? Copyright grants the author the right to decide by what terms he will allow distribution of his works. It's as simple as that. The GPL prevents that exclusivity by using that very rule to deny anyone the ability to exclude others from using content covered under the license.

You're being obtuse, magnet links didnt exist on TPB when this case came to court and was adjudicated. TPB has consistently refused to do any removal of copyrighted works and wasnt coy about that either.

Which copyrighted works do you think they were hosting? They can't very well remove something they don't possess.